Genki Instruments Intros Wave Wearable MIDI Controller

We talked with Haraldur Hugosson, who gave us an overview of how the Wave works.

The Wave is a ring that lets you control sound, effects and send commands with hand gestures. It connects wirelessly over Bluetooth, so it should work with anything that supports MIDI over Bluetooth.

The company is also working on a Eurorack module that will let you generate CVs with gestures. Acording to Hugosson, the Euro version will also have very low latency, because it won’t have the overhead of a computer operating system.

The latency depends a lot on the hardware Wave is sending to. Bluetooth MIDI experts from Apple have told us that the minimum latency on a Mac is 17 milliseconds and that’s due to Bluetooth standard regulations.

However, on an Android device you can go a lot lower and we’ve measured it under 10 milliseconds there.

The musicians we’ve worked with have not had problems with the latency so far but I agree that it’s most relevant when it comes to percussive sounds. That’s the reason we are also releasing two receivers that will allow users to reduce the latency substantially.

For modular setups we are releasing a Euro rack receiver and on that you can go below 1 millisecond in latency. The other receiver plugs into a USB port and although measured it exactly it should be the same latency that’s in regular MIDI keyboards.

I would like to use a device like this but with it mounted on a joystick / ball device to generate X-Y-Z controller data.
There was such a device launched about 1-2 years ago, shaped like a foot pedal but to be manipulated by hand.

I don’t like the concept of ‘wearing’ devices, because I do a lot with my hands – playing keyboards, adjusting synth controls etc.